Reading failure is not just a school problem. It is also a mental health problem; research shows that reading failure can lead to depressive symptoms (Maughan et al. 2003). Reading failure has also been linked to bullying, violence, and crime. The Department of Education states that 85% of juveniles (teens) going through the juvenile court system are “functionally illiterate” because they cannot read or read very poorly. The Department of Education also found that 70% of adult inmates in American prisons are unable to read above the fourth-grade level. In the same study, the Department of Education states that 21% of the general adult population can only read at or below fifth-grade level (National Center for Adult Literacy, 2007). The Nation’s Report Card (2009), which has been tracking reading failure for the past 23 years stated that 90% of students who dropped out of school, dropped out because they were failing in reading. The National Center for Educational Statistics (2016) stated that 40% of graduating high school seniors in 2015 that received diplomas and participated in graduation ceremonies were not prepared for college because of poor reading ability. The Nation’s Report Card (2015) posted that only 36% of fourth grade students, 34% of eighth grade students, and only 37% of 12th grade students scored as proficient or above in reading on recent reading tests. Students are labeled as proficient when they can read at or above grade level. The need for an effective method for teaching reading is well substantiated. The National Reading Panel (2000) evaluated over 100,000 reading studies and concluded that the “whole language” method that we are using in public school is the wrong way to teach children to read. Even blended methods and so called Reading Recovery have been proven not to work (Yoncheva et al. 2015). We are still using these ineffective methods 17 years later; even though there are several effective research-proven methods that actually work. Why won’t the schools change?​

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Elaine Clanton Harpine, Ph.D.

Elaine is a program designer with many years of experience helping at-risk children learn to read. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (Counseling) from the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.